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05 Jul Rebecca Barrigos Pauline Hanson calls herself an outsider who stands up for “ordinary Australians” against the elite. The “Battler Bus” she drove around during the 2017 Queensland election campaign was one expression of this. So was her recent challenge to politicians to forgo their latest pay rise and her...CONTINUE READING

22 Jan Rebecca Barrigos Queensland is considered more conservative and backward than the southern states. Queensland “difference” has been used to explain the long period of conservative National Party rule from the 1950s under the extreme right wing premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, the f...CONTINUE READING

28 Aug Rebecca Barrigos The recent toppling of confederate statues in the US should inspire us to tear down some racist statues of our own. A statue of Lachlan Macquarie in Sydney’s Hyde Park has for years attracted rightful attention and contempt from Indigenous activists and historians. As governor of NSW, 1810...CONTINUE READING

02 Sep Rebecca Barrigos September marks 15 years since the US state turned the tragedy of the World Trade Centre attacks into a justification for years of brutality and horror inflicted on the population of the Middle East. The “war on terror”, launched by the administration of president George W. Bush in the wee...CONTINUE READING

16 Aug Rebecca Barrigos Since the Senate results were announced, one new senator in particular has received a lot of media attention. Malcolm Roberts of One Nation, who scraped into the last Queensland spot, has been hotly solicited for interviews, appearing on several current affairs shows, and has been extensiv...CONTINUE READING

22 Apr Rebecca Barrigos The Turnbull government wants to slash university funding by at least 20 percent and to introduce a revamped version of Christopher Pyne’s notorious 2014 plan to deregulate university fees. The full extent of the Liberals’ education cuts won’t be known until the May budget is released, but...CONTINUE READING

15 Feb Rebecca Barrigos For decades, Australian politicians and university administrations have championed policies to corporatise Australian universities and generate ever more profit from tertiary education. In 2014, university revenues totalled more than $25 billion. Vice-chancellors have boosted these by trea...CONTINUE READING

27 Sep Rebecca Barrigos In many ways Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, and the disease-causing Toxoplasma gondii share a lot in common. They thrive off the vulnerability of the sick and weak, create nothing of value themselves and are both parasites born of a shitty environment. Recently Shkreli...CONTINUE READING

08 Dec Rebecca Barrigos The festive season is looking very merry for Australian bosses. This year, workers clocked up unpaid overtime equivalent to a whopping $110 billion in stolen wages according to new estimates by the Australia Institute. Walking the tightrope: have Australians achieved work/life balance? rev...CONTINUE READING